


Patterns

by stoprobbers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Romance, Teenage Rebellion, but i'm super amused 'teenage rebellion' is a tag option so let's go with that, i say 'teenage rebellion' i mean 'teenage shennanigans'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 09:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: -i guess it would be nice to help in your escape from patterns your parents definedIf you asked Nancy Wheeler how long she'd known Jonathan Byers, she'd say forever. But in the months after their adventure to bring down the big baddies in the government and the most terrifying monster hunt she's ever lived through, the months after the quiet thing between them shifts to something louder and stronger, she realizes she may not know him much at all.





	Patterns

**Author's Note:**

> Mood and inspiration lyric from Of Montreal's ["Gronlandic Edit."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBfgQvM7wtE%0A)
> 
> I really went off the "teenage romance" deep end with this one and I regret nothing.

If you asked Nancy Wheeler how long she's known Jonathan Byers, she'd say forever. Since they were young, since their little brothers were even younger. She knows he likes rock music and long hair, dark colors and pretentious authors. She knows he doesn't like being called on in class, or parties, or talking all that much, or making friends. She knows he loves his family more than anything.

She knows now more than she did a year ago. She knows he hates guns and loves animals, that he's not very good with a bat but excellent with a lighter, that he won't panic under pressure and that he'll do anything for the people he loves, especially his little brother.

She knows intimate things now, too, like how he kisses, and the way his arms tremble as he holds himself above her, and how he says her name when he's inside her. She knows what his sweat smells like and his skin tastes like and where his happy trail starts and where it goes. She knows how that tastes, too.

She knows he has nightmares, and that he sometimes talks in his sleep, and that he talks more in his sleep when he's having nightmares but sometimes it's just him talking to his dog, _What are we gonna do with all these pizza boxes, buddy?_ She knows what color red he turns when she tells him about that dream, and how pale he is when he rockets awake from nightmares. And she's learning – fast, she always learns fast – how to chase the nightmares away.

But in the months after their adventure to bring down the big baddies in the government and the most terrifying monster hunt she's ever lived through (and what does it mean she's got other monster hunts to compare it to), the months after the quiet thing between them shifts to something louder and stronger, she realizes she may not know him much at all.

+++

 

She made fun of him for liking the Talking Heads on Halloween but after weeks of sneaking into each other's rooms she realizes she likes them too. They make her feet bop and her chin bounce around and her hips wiggle against his. They make his hands press into her flesh and hold her against him as his smile turns into something more dangerous.

He questions her enjoyment of everything he plays that she likes – neither of them trust the other just yet in matters so personal; to make sure the Demogorgon doesn't get them, of course, but not to be honest about the Clash and Tom Cruise and the things they hold closest to their hearts - but also teases her gently for what she does gravitate toward. She teases him in return every time Bauhaus pops up on a mix tape.

She likes the cadence of David Byrne's voice and the funk-punk, as Jonathan calls it, of their songs. She puts them on and lets her body move against his until he can't pay attention to the music anymore and can only say her name against her skin, breathing into the hollow of her neck as she fits her fingers into the notches of his spine and hangs on for dear life.

She doesn't realize how obvious they are until she puts on _Remain In Light_ one afternoon and hears one of her brother's friends – Dustin probably – exclaim "Are you kidding me?!" and it shatters the spell. They can't stop laughing and Jonathan puts on Joy Division to mourn not being able to finish what they started.

(He sneaks into her room the next night and makes it up to her.)

+++ 

He gets letters with flyers in them. She has no idea what they mean. He keeps them in a pile on his desk, strewn with the cassette tapes and film canisters and darkroom prints that dominate the room, and never talks about them but never throws them out either.

She finally picks up the one on top one night when they're half-studying, half-hanging out, and examines it. She doesn't know what a Naked Raygun is or what it has to do with an address on Belmont Street. She's pretty sure there's no Belmont Street in Hawkins.

Jonathan returns from the bathroom and lets out a soft "Oh" when he sees her holding it.

"Where do you get these?" she asks, holding it slightly aloft. He walks over to his bed and sits back down on it with a shrug.

"Friends."

He picks up a pile of flash cards and gestures at the spot she'd previously occupied expectantly, and she puts the flyer down, lets it go and returns to their physics test.

+++

He knows parts of Hawkins she didn't even know existed.

He takes her to see "Beverly Hills Cop" (at her behest, with plenty of raised eyebrows and snarky mumblings in the car on the way) and everybody knows his name. Their tickets are free and so is their popcorn. As they settle in she asks about it. He looks confused at her question.

"I worked here for a summer," he explains. "Plus, everyone comes into the store. We trade, kind of."

She ponders that all through the movie and every time he notices her distraction he squeezes her hand and gives her a look like he's worried something is very wrong. She's just trying to think of what store he works at. She never bothered to ask.

After the movie they go back to one of his former coworker's houses, drink beer and she watches him and laugh and joke with a small group of complete strangers and wonders if they go to her school. She wonders how no one figured out that Jonathan Byers does, in fact, have friends and that they seem pretty nice. She wonders if there's a second high school in Hawkins she doesn't know about.

That seems impossible.

He keeps an arm around her the entire time, their thighs pressed tight against each other, and makes sure to include her in jokes and stories and explain the references that fly over her head, and she's not sure she's ever heard him talk so much.

She thinks about another night like this with another boy and another group of friends and the feeling she was being intentionally left in the dark to protect a bond more important than her. She doesn't feel less important, but she does realize there's a world beyond her own she's never bothered to investigate as others have.

She's surprised how gutting that revelation is considering she once climbed through a tree into an alternate dimension and made it back alive.

+++

His patterns are different than hers, than Steve's. There aren't parties every weekend and nights with his work friends are few and far between. Usually it's just the two of them, sometimes with Will and the boys, sometimes with Joyce, sometimes with Max and Eleven and the whole gang, but mostly the two of them alone watching movies and doing schoolwork and listening to tapes and ignoring the shadows in the corners of the room.

So it's a surprise when he asks her, as they drive to school on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning, if she can get away Friday night. All night.

She's caught so off-guard she can't even muster a dirty joke.

"For what?" she asks instead. He glances at her and gives her that little half smile, the one that means she's said something a little dumb and very cute.

"It's a surprise."

"A surprise?"

She tries to clear her thoughts, runs down dates and times and wonders if there's some sort of anniversary or special occasion she's missed. It's not her birthday. It's not his birthday. Unless he's being very childish it's not their anniversary.

She harrumphs softly, stymied. He lets out a soft snort, laughing at her.

He parks and she climbs out of the car automatically, hoists her bookbag, closes the door. When she looks up he's right in front of her, inches away, and she can't help but think about a weird underground bunker apartment outside of Chicago and watered down vodka. He reaches up to lightly touch the furrow in her brow.

"Don't think too hard, Nance," he says and kisses her sweet and firm. Warmth creeps from her lips down her neck and pools in the pit of her stomach. She slides one hand to his waist – long and shockingly lean, you really can't tell anything about his bones and sinew from the clothes he wears – and starts to tug him closer but he pulls away. He's still grinning that grin.

"See you at lunch," he says and walks off.

When Carol coughs out a _slut_ as she walks past, she doesn't even notice.

+++

She tells her mom she's having a sleepover at Allie's again, and while her mother smiles and nods and coos over their (fictional) movie choices, the way she's looking at her makes Nancy think she knows _exactly_ where her daughter will be and who's been climbing in her bedroom window for the last three months.

But she doesn't say no and Nancy ponders what that means while she waits for Jonathan to pick her up and take her to school.

She tries to get more clues out of him about where they're going but he won't say a word, just tells her "Later, later," and gives her that smile again. He's practically giddy with the secret.

They have three morning classes together and she passes him notes in every class.

_So where are we going? Come on, tell me. OK, give me a hint. Just a little hint. Just ONE little hint!_

He crumples up each one but his eyes dance as he does, biting his lip to hold his laughter and maybe the secret as well. She thinks about biting his lip later, revenge for keeping her in the dark. She's pretty sure it won't feel like punishment to him.

After the fifth note she crosses her arms, huffs, and refuses to look at him. She puts on the best pout she can that won't attract their teacher's attention and waits. She can feel his eyes boring into the side of her head for the rest of class, but when she finally gives in and glances his way he's not annoyed at all. He's grinning at her, in fact.

She sticks her tongue out at him. He winks.

They eat lunch on the hood of his car and skip the rest of their classes for the day.

+++

After an hour in the car that she fills with constant, unrelenting questions, he gives in and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a carefully folded piece of paper.

"Shit, Nance, you're as bad as the boys," he says as he hands it to her. "I bet Mike learned it from you."

"Probably," she shrugs, happy to have gotten something out of him. "I'm very persistent."

"Tell me about it," he mutters, and ejects the tape from the stereo to flip it over.

The paper is another one of the flyers she's seen, a list of names she doesn't recognize, another address on a street she doesn't know.

"This," he says, reaching over and tapping one of the names, "is my friend's band."

"Band," she echoes.

"I want to see them. They want to meet you. I thought… I thought we could use a night away. Kinda like… like normal people," he says.

His voice has gone soft again, quiet and unsure. She looks up at him and he's staring studiously at the highway. She hasn't seen him like this in weeks, she realizes; with her he's confident, playful, strong. If he wasn't driving she knows he'd be staring at his shoes, maybe scuffing the toe of the sneakers into the ground.

She reaches out and takes his hand, the one resting on the gearshift, laces their fingers together.

" _You_ ," she says, giving his hand a squeeze, "have never been normal."

He chuckles.

"So where are we going?" she asks. He nods at the windshield and she looks up just in time to see a sign that says "Chicago                  97"

+++

The only time Nancy's ever been to Chicago was when she was a child. Her father had a weekend-long business conference and her mother suggested they all go together, their little family of four. While her father worked they went to art museums and to the top of brand new skyscrapers, looking at the grid of streets and the sparkling blue lake.

Once upon a time, before she found an older man with a steady, good-paying jobs, Karen Wheeler had studied English and Architecture, and she took 10-year-old Nancy and seven-year-old Mike around the historic neighborhoods, explaining the different kinds of columns and porches, boring them to death until they found a hot dog stand and managed to convince her to let them try Chicago-style dogs.

Her memories of Chicago are hazy around the edge, bright and sunny and filled with family. When Jonathan steers his car into city limits it is dark and the city looks nothing like she remembers.

He seems to know where he's going, which makes her wonder how many times he's made this trip before, to see his friends or a band or whatever else it is he does when he carves out a little time away from his family. Not for the first time, she thinks of how she's only _really_ gotten to know him in the last few months, and only a tiny bit a year before that.

So much of his life is a mystery to her. She wants to know it all, to keep the knowledge behind her ribs where no one can steal it, a reminder that he's hers, all hers. She's not used to this feeling and tries to push it down, but when he glances over at her she thinks he might be able to see it anyway.

His friend's name is Shawn, he explains, and they used to work together at the store (it's the record store, she's found out, _of course_ it's the record store, how on earth did she not know he worked at the record store _where else would he work?_ ) until Shawn graduated and went to Chicago for school. He's technically still in school, Jonathan thinks, but mostly he plays in a band and works at another record store and lives in a run-down house with half a dozen of his friends. That's where they'll be staying; they have a spare mattress in the basement.

Nancy's stomach flips and flops like it did when they left the lab and started on a quest to find a paranoid investigative journalist, and oh, she's missed this feeling.

When they arrive, a group of shaggy-haired boys spill out onto a stoop and scoop Jonathan up in hugs and shoulder claps, all talking over each other in their excitement to see him. He blushes bright red, embarrassed by all the attention, but he keeps her hand tight in his the entire time and everyone exclaims over her as well and she's pretty sure she's stumbled into the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone apparently includes moth-eaten couches, a record player spinning New Order, warm beer and his sweat-slicked palm on her lower back, and she'd rather explore this than the Upside Down any day.

+++

When she was a child Chicago was big and sparkling and overwhelming. As a woman (she's grown up fast, so fast), Chicago is _fun._

There's a hot dog stand down the street and they get another round of Chicago dogs and she finds out Jonathan doesn't like raw tomatoes and picks his delicately off his meal. She's not even bothered by stuffing her face, eagerly digging into the salty spicy, and blushes when he wipes a smear of mustard from the corner of her mouth.

He licks it off his thumb with dark eyes and it feels like the most adult promise he's ever made her.

The bar where the band plays in is dark and dingy, stickers all over the walls and graffiti in the bathroom. She doesn’t think it's all ages but no one asks for ID or hesitates to sell her a beer. Jonathan talks to the bartender with an ease she didn't know he was capable of, and the girl in coat check stares at her in a way that makes her realize she's probably not Jonathan's first.

Maybe not even his second.

How did he _hide_ this from their tiny town?

He steers her into a corner as they wait for Shawn's band, head close to hers.

"You okay?" he asks. She's been quiet, she knows.

"Yeah," she says, eyes big as she stares up at him. "I had no idea."

"That I had friends?"

His mouth twists in that horrible, self-hating way he has, and she told Murray his dad was an asshole but that wasn't enough to encompass how much she _hates_ Lonnie for what he did to his smart, sweet, beautiful older son.

"That you're _cool_ ," she says. He blushes at that and she presses close to him, feeling Coat Check Girl's eyes on her, feeling powerful, feeling _real._

+++

Shawn's band is _loud_.

Jonathan doesn't dance, he's told her that a dozen times before, but he bops his head and shuffles foot to foot on beat and it's the cutest thing she's ever seen.

She covers her ears and stares as the sweat dripping down his neck and the way his face is open and joyful in a way she's only seen when his little brother has miraculously returned from the brink of death. He catches her staring and leans down so his mouth is next to her ear.

"Do you like it?"

She laughs, pulls back, and shakes her head.

"No!" Her grin is ear to ear.

He looks confused – happy, but confused – and she throws her arms around his neck and pulls him close.

"But I like you."

He squeezes her a little too tight and spills beer on the back of her sweater.

+++

She has no idea what time it is. She has no idea what day it is. She has no idea where she is or when she is or how she is. Her entire world is Jonathan's lips, and his hips, and how his muscles strain under his skin and how warm he is, all of him, everywhere. He kisses her neck, her collarbone, her breast, her stomach. He lowers his mouth between her thighs and she's lost, lost, lost.

She clutches at his head, fingers tangled in his hair, until she feels like her head is about to float off her shoulders and then he's suddenly above her, inside her, around her, the beginning and the end, everything, everything, everything.

She gasps his name and claws his back and the world is a sunburst and then nothing but the sound of their harsh breathing, the feel of his teeth resting on her collarbone.

"Oh my god," she manages after a moment and that pulls a laugh from them both. He bounces on top of her, a warm, sweaty blanket, as she giggles.

"I love you," he says and jerks, like he didn't mean to say that out loud, like he means to retreat. She locks her legs around his lower back to make sure he stays right where he is. Uses a hand to steer him by the cheek until they are face to face, millimeters apart, breath warm and wet on each other's lips.

"I love you," she says.

She means it.

+++

The next morning her head aches and her mouth tastes like something died in it, but she can't seem to bring herself to untangle herself from the man draped on top of her. It's too early, but she can't fall back asleep.

She feels it; how they're not children anymore.

He snores softly into her shoulder, his fingers grasping at her waist. It was the same the night at Murray's, the same most nights they've spent together since, but as she strokes her fingers through his hair – it's oily and sweaty and they _both_ need a long shower – she realizes it's only now she feels different. In that weird industrial bunker she felt strong, she felt righteous, but now she feels… complete.

And kinda maudlin, apparently.

He hides this, she's realized. Keeps it close to his chest so the bullies and prom kings and monsters can't get it. Keeps it hidden from his mother and Will so he has something of his own, a way to define himself without anyone else's input. And he's shared it with her. Willingly. Enthusiastically.

He yelled at her once, trekking through the woods to find the monster that stole her best friend and his brother, angry and defensive and hurt. Just another suburban girl, he called her, thinking she's rebelling, really repeating all the patterns she learned from her parents. The patterns they set out for her, in what she knows they think is her interest.

She had been so angry. So insulted. So irritated with how pretentious he was being, how much bullshit he was slinging her way. And he _was_ being pretentious, but he was also right and that made her angrier. That he dare see inside her fortress, her carefully crafted self. That he dare call her out on her hypocrisy.

He's still pretentious, but she feels freer than she ever has, feels like the opportunity to break free is closer than ever. Maybe from one pattern to another, she has no idea, but out of the pattern she's seen and resented for so many years. 

God, she wishes she could call Barb. She has so much to tell her.

He stirs, nuzzles her neck sleepily.

"Nancdonwakuptoorly," he mumbles. She chuckles.

"What's that?" she whispers in the grey dawn.

"You sleep," he instructs, a little clearer. She laughs a little louder and his eyes flutter open.

"It's too early," he says again, shifting so he's covering her, hovering over her. His arms tremble with the effort because he's still mostly asleep, but he angles his mouth over hers just the same. She turns her head just in time. He makes an offended sound.

"It tastes like something died in my mouth," she says. "I need to brush my teeth."

He chases her lips until she lets him catch them and the warmth spreads through her fast, so fast. She wonders when she became this wanton.

He pulls away sooner than she'd like and gives her a bleary-eyed smirk.

"Yeah, you really do," he says and she shoves him off her, rolling out of bed and putting her feet on the concrete floor.

It's freezing but she doesn't bother to pull on any clothes, just grabs her toothbrush from her overnight bag and scurries into the tiny bathroom. She feels his eyes on her the entire way there. He waits until she gets back to fold himself around her again and she counts his breaths until she drifts off.

+++

The "Welcome to Hawkins" sign is comforting and irritating all at once. Already she yearns for the little oasis they created in the last sixteen hours, but she also feels a flutter of excitement to see her brother, hear what he did with his Friday night. To see Will and make sure his eyes are clear and bright. To know everyone is still okay.

She's got her feet up on the dashboard, her left hand stroking the back of Jonathan's neck as he drives, and a comfortable silence between them. On the stereo R.E.M. moans and murmurs, notes winding around them both like a Gordian knot.

"I didn't know," she says softly.

"That I was cool?" he jokes, but his voice is just as gentle as hers. She shakes her head, turns to look at his profile with a smile. Traces the sharp edges of his jaw with her eyes.

"No," she chuckles. "That I could feel like this."

"Like what?"

"Full," she says, but that's not quite right. She searches around her head for a moment. "Happy."

"Yeah?"

She slides her fingers along his neck to his shoulder, then down his arm. He lets go of the wheel, tangles their fingers together.

"Yes." She squeezes his fingers. He squeezes back.

When they drive past Hawkins Lab neither of them notices.

+++

His face takes on new angles in the red light of the dark room. He's standing practically shoulder to shoulder with Nicole as they fight for space in the chemical trays before final assignments are due. Nancy keeps herself tightly packed in the corner, not taking up any extra space out of respect for the other photography students. But her eyes never stray from him, never stop watching. She is learning in the best way she knows how: memorization. The angles of his face, the planes of his body, the sound of his voice and the skill of his work. The things he keeps so carefully hidden from everyone else but lets her discover, uncover, like the archeologist of his life.

He glances up, catches her eye.

He's a sensitive and sweet boy, beaten down and into a shell, a thick fortress of anger and defense to keep the softest parts of him safe. She's slipped into those cracks, filled in the gaps in his defense with something warmer and gentler. In turn he's crept into her like ivy, changing the very nature of her foundation into something more open, more free.

She hopes.

He smiles. She smiles back.


End file.
